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EMILY DICKINSON 1830–1886). HER LIFE. Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1830. Throughout her life, she seldom left her house . The people with whom she c a me in contact, however , had an enormous impact on her thoughts and poetry. RECLUSIVE INDIVIDUAL.
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HER LIFE • Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1830. • Throughout her life, she seldom left her house. • The people with whom she came in contact, however, had an enormous impact on her thoughts and poetry.
RECLUSIVE INDIVIDUAL • By the 1860s, Dickinson lived in almost total physical isolation from the outside world, but actively maintained many correspondences and read widely.
CHRONIC PAIN • Dickinson herself wasafflicted for some time with her own illness affecting the kidneys, symptoms of which include chronic pain, which may have contributed to her seclusion from the outside world. • She died in Amherst in 1886.
The DICKENSON HOMESTEAD as it appears today. In 2003 it was made into the Emily Dickinson Museum.
HER POETRY • She was not publicly recognized during her lifetime. • The first volume of her work was published in 1890 and the last in 1955.
HER POETRY • Dickinson's poetry reflects her loneliness and the speakers of her poems generally live in a state of want, but her poems are also marked by the moments which suggest the possibility of happiness.
Most of her poems exhibit her extraordinary powers of observation and description. • Her poetic form • with her customary four-line stanzas, • ABCB rhyme schemes and • alternations in iambic meter is derived from hymns.
A poet of INWARDNESS • Dickinson's greatest achievement as a poet of inwardness is her brilliantlanguage. • Dickinson often writes aphoristically, • she compresses a great deal of meaning into a very small number of words. • This makes her poems hard to understand on a first reading.
Her language Her forceful language is characterized by • long disruptive dashes, • iambic meters, • rhymes, • aphoristic style.
LIFE DEVOTED TOREFLECTION & CREATIVITY • Dickinson is not a "philosophical poet“. • She makes no effort to organize her thoughts and feelings into a coherent, unified worldview. • Rather, her poems simply record thoughts and feelings experienced naturally over the course of a lifetime devoted to reflection and creativity. • That’s why her poetry is astonishing, compelling, moving, and thought-provoking.
Dickinson's descriptions of nature • Her themes are uncomplicated. • Her nature poems describe important waysin which human beings interact with creatures of nature. Shecreates memorable poems by • closely observing details of the physical world • vividly generating new images in the mind.
Twotechniques • Despite their simplicity , her poems are memorable because of the techniques she uses. Twotechniques • metaphors • a new and startling application of language • both techniques result in powerful images.
NOT A SOCIAL POET • Dickinsonwas no social poet. • Her world was bounded by her home and its surrounding countryside; the great events of her day play little role in her poetry. • Social and historical ideas and values must have contributed in shaping her character, but Emily Dickinson's ultimate context is herself, the milieu of her mind.
Though she was a reclusive individual and a poet of extraordinary inward depth, Dickinson's poems are not simply private shorthand for her own thoughts. • She universalizes her own experience . • Her poetry enables her audience to enter into and share herexperience.
